Ariah (41 page)

I squeezed his hand. “I’m all right.” I sat up a little more. “I’m hungry.”

Sorcha looked across the bed. “Shayat, would you…”

I heard the screech of a chair across the floorboards. “I’ll go get the healer,” she said.

Sorcha sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through my hair. “Gave us a scare, you did.”

“
I don’t remember much.”

“
You were a mess.”

“
What happened?”

“
Infection, I think.”

The healer fed me broth, then bread the next day. When I kept that down, she declared me fit for travel and kicked us out of her house. Shayat sold her camel and scraped together train fare for her, Sorcha, and myself. Tamir refused to part with his camel, refused to speak to me, and set off to make the last leg of the Lost River alone.

PART SIX:

RABATHA: A RETURN

CHAPTER 27

I left Shayat at the Rabathan train stage with a handshake. I couldn’t even bring myself to thank her. She told me to take care of myself, nodded at Sorcha, and disappeared into the crush of the crowd. “Quite a trip,” Sorcha said.

Again, I found no words. I stared out in the direction she’d gone and laughed. Sorcha threaded an arm around my ribs. He shouldered what was left of our things. “All right,” he said, “let’s go see what we came here to see.”

We walked slowly through the streets of Rabatha in the hand-me-down robes of the trip. We were dusty from travel and smelled of the elvish compartments of the train: a mix of sweat and fear and stale food. Sorcha was so obviously nahsiyya, and standing next to him brought out the nahsiyya in me. He held me with incriminating tenderness. We were stared at. We were stopped by Qin agents and asked for papers over and over and over. I had to explain my injuries a half dozen times. Two different policemen wanted to see the wounds for themselves. It took an absurd amount of time to get to Dirva’s house. I was tired, worn, hungry, and thirsty when we found his door.

Dirva had moved to a small house deep in the borough. I laughed when we found it. Sorcha shot me a curious look. “It’s a shaper’s house,” I said. “The way it’s built, it’s got doors on both sides. It’s a shaper’s house. And she doesn’t even know.”

“
Who doesn’t know?”

“
Nisa. His wife. I’m sure she doesn’t know.” Sorcha took a step towards the house, but I held him in place. “Do you really want to do this?”

“
Well, hell, Ariah, it’s a bit late for me to back out now.”

“
That’s not an answer.”

Sorcha sighed. He shook his head and glanced out at the narrow street. “Fuck, I don’t know. But, look, you got a duty. And I’m here. For better or worse, I’m here, right, so let’s just get this over and done with.”

I grew oddly nervous as we approached his door. I couldn’t explain why, but there was something nerve-wracking about seeing Dirva again after two years of separation. I tried to imagine what he would see when he opened the door, how I’d changed, and whether it was for the better. I knocked on the door, and Dirva answered it.

I don’t even think he saw Sorcha. I was passed straight from Sorcha’s arms to Dirva’s. Dirva held me tight and seemed not to hear when I winced. He held me by the shoulders and smiled. He read me in his gentle half-red way. His smile faltered. “Are you all right? Are you in pain?”

“
Yes, I ran into some trouble on the trip.”

“
At the border?”

“
No. Bandits. I’m all right.”

“
You should sit though,” Sorcha said quietly. He stood very close to me, protective and territorial, but he could not look away from Dirva. “You should drink some water.”

“
Sorcha, I…” Dirva’s voice trailed off. He held out his hand to Sorcha. Sorcha hesitated, drenched in wariness. He slowly, carefully, took Dirva’s hand. They shook hands like they had never met before. “There is space in the attic,” Dirva said.

“
You have a shower?” Sorcha asked.

“
Yes.”

“
I’d like to use it.”

“
Of course.” Dirva held open the door. Sorcha asked him where the attic was, and Dirva pointed down a narrow hallway. Sorcha disappeared around the corner with our packs. Dirva smiled again when he was out of sight. He brushed the hair off my forehead. “You’ve let it grow out.”

“
Sloth, not fashion,” I said.

“
And these robes.”

“
Pragmatism.”

He laughed. “You seem well. Vathorem wrote. He said your training was going well. I’m sorry to have interrupted it.”

“
It was enough, I think. I’m glad to be here. It’s an honor, a real honor.”

“
The honor is mine, Ariah. Come, sit. Let me get you water. Have you eaten? Let me get you food.” He sat me down in the armchair he’d transplanted from his bachelor’s apartment. The bookcases were the same, as was the kitchen table. The rest of the furniture was worn, broken in, but unfamiliar to me. I guessed they were transplants from Nisa’s previous apartment.

The water he gave me was pure and tasted slightly metallic. I laughed. “What?” Dirva asked.

“
Piped water.”

“
Oh, yes,” he said. He sat down beside me. “Vilahna has gotten no better, I take it?”

“
If they have gotten better I would hate to see where they started. Where’s Nisa?”

“
Working,” Dirva said. “She wants to work right up until the birth.”

“
How is she doing?”

“
Well. Very well. I’ve never seen an easier pregnancy,” he said. “It is good to see you again.”

I finished the water and turned the empty glass in my hands. “About Sorcha…”

“
I am glad to see him, too.”

“
Nisa doesn’t know who he is, does she?”

Dirva was quiet for a moment. “No.”

“
And you’d rather keep it that way?”

“
Yes.”

“
Does she know why I’m here?”

“
Yes,” he said. “I explained falos to her. I told her it was something I learned about while caravanning in Vilahna. She finds it odd, I think, but she is willing.”

“
I should find an apartment. I should get a work assignment,” I said. “Sorcha and his violin will not be welcome in your attic for long.”

Dirva blinked at me. “You think you’ll stay?”

“
Falos stay.”

* * *

Nisa was glorious in pregnancy. She radiated joy. She and Sorcha got along very well; I think he was a bit taken with her. Sorcha introduced himself to her as my friend, which she accepted, though she looked at me differently from then on. He sat with her in the evenings when she came home from work and talked with her about pregnancy and childbirth. He had seen a lot of both. Dirva likely had, too, but he kept his knowledge to himself. Sorcha asked her what she had planned for the birth, for the newborn. She had few answers.

“
I don’t know,” she said. “There’s a healer down the street in case we need her. Do you think we will?”

“
Probably not, but it’s always good to have a midwife on hand. You got a midwife?”

“
Midwife?”

“
You know, the one everyone goes to when it’s time.”

“
That’s the healer.”

“
Ah, no, healing and midwifery, those are two different things. Midwifery, it’s a lot of care work, you know, keeping you comfortable, keeping you calm, that sort of thing. Tell you what: I’ll be your midwife.”

Nisa laughed. Dirva cast a wary look at me, then Sorcha. Sorcha seemed not to notice. He smiled and felt Nisa’s belly. She let him. “You’re a man,” she said.

Sorcha looked up in mock surprise. “What? Really?”

She swatted his shoulder. “I am a married woman.”

“
So I’ve heard. And I’m a man who’s delivered babies.”

This was news to me. “You have?” I asked.

Sorcha nodded. “Was a girl back in the squat house. I was on hand for two of Falynn’s little ones. Was a time I thought about going into midwifery proper. I had Falynn bring me along when he had pregnant patients.” He smiled at Nisa. “Turned out perfect every time. I’ve good luck with babies.”

“
I didn’t know you wanted to be a midwife,” I said.

“
I did. Still do a bit. Picked the violin, though. Anyway, Nisa, I’m here and I’m not doing anything else, so if you do want some help when the time comes it would be my pleasure to provide it.”

Nisa laughed and cast a curious look at Dirva. “I’ll think about it.”

Later that night, as we lay together on the bedrolls we’d rolled out side by side, I thought of Shayat. Memories of her body and her voice came to me at odd moments, taunting me. The thoughts of her sometimes got away from me, and I had a tendency to dwell on her. It nagged at me that she was in the city, probably at Parvi’s shop only three streets over, but that we lived separate lives once again. I spoke to Sorcha to take my mind off her. “You know I’ve never spent much time with pregnant women. Or babies.”

“
Right, you and your small families.”

“
Do you think it will go all right for her?”

“
No reason to think it won’t. Though there are things to check sooner rather than later. Position of the kid, that sort of thing. Maybe she’s already had all that looked at.” Sorcha yawned. He rolled over to face me. “She is a lovely girl.”

“
She’s a Qin apologist,” I said.

“
Is she really?”

“
She is. She really is.”

He idly ran his fingers through my hair. “She’s got no idea who I am.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
No, it’s…it’s not bad, exactly. I knew that going in. But it is strange, you know. I keep thinking she’ll figure it out. Me and Lor—Dirva—we both look like Ma. What’s his story now? He has a Qin pa?”

“
Yes. A Qin father and Semadran mother; both were caravaners. He grew up in Mahlez and worked as a translator in a caravan himself before reassignment to the Rabathan Office of Foreign Relations. His Qin father was in a lost caravan and is presumed dead. His mother died three years ago of an injury sustained in a Mahlez factory. He had no brothers and sisters.”

“
And you’re his family now,” Sorcha said.

I winced when he said it. “I’m sorry, Sorcha.”

“
It is what it is, I guess. And, hell, at least he’s got you. Don’t know why he had to push the rest of us away, but at least he’s got you. I don’t understand him. All these lies he’s wrapped himself up in. I got to get out of this house, though. I’m going to go stir crazy here.”

“
We should go to the markets.”

“
We got no money.”

“
The gold elves are there.”

Sorcha gave me an odd look. He sighed and tucked his face into the hollow of my shoulder. “Maybe I could stake out a spot to play. I got to do something, though. I got no clue how to be around Dirva.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
No harm.”

Sorcha and I spent a lot of time at the markets in the weeks that followed. I stole poems from the gold elves, but Sorcha never stayed with me very long when I hung around the live goods. There are slaves in the City, but only in the Qin quarter, and even then they’re rare. City slaves exist in an ambiguous legal gray area—slaves cannot be bought or sold in the City walls, though they can be transported through it. Slavery was not a thing he was used to. The sight of them troubled him. The fact that we could do nothing for them troubled him more. He disapproved of my fascination with them, the way I lurked on the outskirts of their lives. He left me at the slavers’ platforms to play his violin on street corners instead.